In the past few months, Twitter appears to have finally found a business model, and that model is advertising &8212' chief executive Dick Costolo said in September that the company had a4‚¬Acracked the codea4‚¬¯ on ads. But Twitter co-founder Ev Williams said today that the company isna4‚¬a4„t settling on ads.
a4‚¬ATherea4‚¬a4„s a million ways to make money with Twitter,a4‚¬¯ he said. a4‚¬AWea4‚¬a4„ll probably try a few more.a4‚¬¯
Williams did talk a bit more about Twitter&'s ad products, saying that the company&'s concern right now is that demand from advertisers far exceeds supply, which is why the company is building out its sales team. Like Costolo, Williams emphasized that Twitter ads start out as regular content and stop running if theya4‚¬a4„re not getting much response from users.
John Battelle, who was interviewing Williams on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit, said hea4‚¬a4„s heard that Twitter&'s Promoted Trend ads cost between $80,000 and $100,000 but Williams didna4‚¬a4„t comment on specifics. (No surprise.) On the question of total advertising revenue, he said, &''I haven&'t done the math.&''
There do seem to be revenue streams that Twitter isna4‚¬a4„t interested in. The company is testing an analytics service and apparently doesna4‚¬a4„t plan to charge for it. Although Twitter has sold access to its its firehose of data in the past, Williams said Twitter made those deals because the team thought increasing distribution of its data was a good thing.
a4‚¬AThe point of those deals was never primarily about revenue,a4‚¬¯ he said.
That doesna4‚¬a4„t mean reselling data couldna4‚¬a4„t become source of money. Gnip today announced a deal with Twitter to resell access to the firehose.
Williams also discussed his decision to step down as Twitter&'s CEO, which I covered in a separate post.
[photo by Dean Takahashi]
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Companies: Twitter
People: Ev Williams
Companies: Twitter
People: Ev Williams
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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